In recent years it has been common to provide a thin laminate to the surface of one or more teeth, especially a white hard laminate to make yellowish teeth whiter but also in some cases to strengthen the teeth by providing them with a harder and stronger surface layer than they have naturally.
Every person is very sensitive for even very small anomalies of his teeth. Therefore, a hard laminate could not just be added to the teeth of a person. The laminate must have some thickness in order to stay adhered to the teeth for years and, sustain normal wear out. The laminate is often made of porcelain and is made at a dental laboratory and cemented to a tooth to be treated by the dentist. Therefore, a thin layer of the surface of the tooth ought to be peeled away as a start of the lamination procedure, a cast of the tooth is taken and sent to the dental laboratory where the porcelain laminate is made.
The object of the invention is to provide a dental instrument adapted for peeling away a thin surface layer of a wanted thickness and extension and to be easy to handle by the dentist making this kind of work.
The invention is based upon a prior instrument described in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,022 owned by the same applicant. Changes have been made in this instrument in order to have the feature aimed at above in order to make the inventive instrument.
A disadvantage with this prior endodontic treatment instrument, if it should be used as a peeling off instrument, is that the tool provided at the end of the instrument must not rotate but only oscillate in the axial direction of the tool, so that the dentist may control and check the position of the tool in a distinct way.
An object of the invention is therefore to provide a dental instrument having a working tool which is only oscillating in axial direction but not rotating.
Another object of the invention is to have the working tool changeable at will to different but wanted angular positions around its axis. It could be an advantage for the dentist to use the same kind of spatula-shaped tool as in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,022 mentioned above but to be able to place it in different angular positions at will dependent upon the actual work he is doing at the tooth under process, because then he could use the same tool during the whole processing work of a tooth.
A still further and very important object of the invention is to provide a comfortable working position for the hand of the dentist during the peeling work, in which the tip of the tool should be moved over the whole surface of the tooth under treatment.
A still further object of the invention is to provide an instrument which may use tools on the market for which no or only minor changes have to be made in order to keep the expenses for the instrument down.